Yoga For Adoptive Families: Let's Breathe! (Part One)

Breathing, along with physical poses (asanas) and mindfulness, is one of the core practices of yoga. Breath work is important not only for its own sake but also because it is an integral component of the other two branches of yoga practice. In fact, it is so important that if your family has limited time for practicing yoga, and/or is new to yoga and doesn't know where to begin, I suggest starting with breathing. What's so important about breathing, especially for adopted children and their families? From a yoga standpoint, breathing helps to increase and circulate "prana," or life force, throughout one's body, nourishing one's overall wellbeing. In particular, breathing can help to calm the nervous system, increase ttention and focus, relax muscles, improve circulation, and boost immune function. Certain types of breathing can increase energy when feeling tired, lethargic, or depressed. Breathing can also help one come back to the body and the present moment when feeling lost in thoughts, dysregulated, and/or disconnected from them due to trauma.

For these reasons, breathing practices and activities can benefit your child by helping to ease and manage the physical, emotional, and mental health needs and challenges that she faces due to her early life experiences. Not surprisingly, breath work can benefit adoptive parents such as yourself, too. They can help you not only cope with the stressors associated with parenting children from hard places but also remain calm and present with your child so that you are better able to meet her needs with connection and compassion. In this three-part post, I will discuss several types of breathing activities and the everyday contexts in which you can practice them. This first part focuses on fun activities that may help you and your child connect with your breath.

Get to know your breath!

For kids who are new to conscious breathing and/or have been disconnected from their breath due to trauma or other factors, a first step for them is to get to know their breath. Although some of the breathing activities described below may help your child calm down and regulate, their primary goal is to help her experience her breath in a curious, fun, and non-judgmental manner. These basic breathing activities also lay the foundation for practicing more directed forms of breathing that I discuss in subsequent sections (and in future blog posts). You can also use these activities as vehicles for connecting with your child by doing them together. Their playful nature, coupled with their ability to calm and regulate, make them especially good activities for connecting with one another.

Smell flowers, real or artificial, to help your child practice breathing through his nose. Nasal breathing, which I discuss at length in part two of this post, can have calming effects, and some yoga teachers and parents

recommend putting a drop of a relaxingrelaxing essential oil (e.g., lavender) on an artificial flower or other soft object to enhance these effects.

Blow on plastic pinwheels together. Experiment with fast breaths and slow breaths, short breaths and long breaths. Blow the pinwheel from different angles and see how those angles affect the pinwheel's motion. You can also incorporate the pinwheels into yoga stories. For example, maybe you are growing a garden, picking flowers, and/or watching flowers blow in the wind.

Move feathers across the room by blowing air at them through straws. There are so many ways to do this. You can explore how the feather moves in response to different types of breaths (e.g., fast, slow, long, short). You can see what happens when you try to blow two feathers at once. You and your child could also coordinate your efforts by seeing whether you can blow your feathers across the room at the same speed. Or you could have a "contest" to see who can get their feather to the other side of the room first. If you child is able to do it, yet another activity is to see how long you both can keep your feathers in the air by blowing air underneath them via your straws. It can be quite funny when you and your child try to maneuver around each other trying to keep track of your floating feathers.

Sit quietly with your child and just breath together, paying attention to which body part(s) move (or not) as you breathe in and out through your nose and/or your mouth. You can then tell each other what you noticed. (This practice especially relates to "mindful breathing," which I will discuss in depth in my next blog post).

Partner-based breathing activities can also be a fun way to practice breathing while connecting with one another. Consider back-to-back breathing (see photo), which I describe in the "Teamwork" section of my post on interactive yoga poses and activities. If your child is comfortable doing so, you can also just place your hands on each others' backs, bellies, hearts, or other body parts to feel how they move during breathing. Afterwards, talk about what you both noticed about each other's breathing. How is your breathing the same? How is it different?

Pay attention to the different temperatures of your breath as you inhale and exhale in different ways. For example, try inhaling through your nose, through your open mouth, or through pursed lips in the shape of a little "o". Then exhale in these ways on the palm on your hand. Tell each other what your noticed.

Have fun with animal breaths and sounds. In kids yoga classes, we practice animal breaths and sounds often. You can hiss like a snake, "hoo" like an owl, buzz like a bee, roar like a lion, and sniff like a rabbit. Also feel free to make up your own animal sounds and breaths. This activity is especially good for promoting imagination and creativity, as you can ask your child to choose an animal and describe the sound that she thinks it makes.

Chant OM together. Not only is it the sound of peace but its vibrations can have calming effect, too. Chant it loudly and quietly and pay attention to how the volume feels. Or take deep breaths in and say OM slowly, seeing how long you can make your OM sounds last. A fun OM activity to do together consists of starting your OMs at the same time, but chanting it your own speeds. This leads to your OMs stopping, starting, and overlapping in interesting ways.

Cover your ears and listen to your breathing as you inhale and exhale through your nose and/or your mouth. Discuss how this covered-ear breathing sounds the same or different compared to breathing with your ears uncovered.

Sing! Singing requires breathing, and as you sing songs with different words, speeds, volumes, ranges of notes, and rhythms, you will use breath in a multitude of ways. After singing together, discuss with your child how your singing breath felt.

Some final practice guidelines

As with other yoga practices that I've discussed in previous posts, make sure that you keep your child's breathing practice relaxed and doable. If your child finds particular breathing activities difficult or resists them, don't force them, as this can increase stress and disconnection--the opposite of what you probably want your breathing practice to promote. Start where she is, gently and mindfully helping to build her breathing practice overtime in ways that speak her interests and needs. Also remember that you don't have to spend long periods of time each day on breathing. Find "mindful moments" throughout the day in which you can incorporate them--a few breaths before meals, in-between daily activities, during family playtime or yoga practice, etc. The benefits of breath work come from consistency practice over time, and not from how long your practice during any given session. Moreover, many children, especially young ones, do not have the ability to focus on breathing activities for long periods of time, anyway. Finally, try making breathing a family activity and everyday ritual. And even if your child doesn't want to participate in breathing activities (on particular occasions or in general), make sure to keep doing them yourself, as it will likely improve your wellbeing, model breathing for your child, and enhance your ability to parent from a place of calm, compassion, and connection.

Next up: Let's Breathe, Part Two: Relaxed breathing in family yoga.

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